Category: Existential novels

The Existential movement is all about the individual, ensuring that it is the individual who can give meaning to life and live it happily. By taking the focuses away from religion and society, the movement calls upon people to take control of their own lives and focus on their own connect to the universe.

It focuses mostly on the theme that the universe is meaningless and that we humans are the only ones who can make meaning in the world. The world isn’t about to do it for us, and only we can make choices such as which religion to believe in.

Traits of Existential novels

In the novels, characters move through crazy worlds that have no meaning and need to discover their own meaning inside of themselves, as well as the pressure from the outside world to take away that meaning,

Emotional decisions are often made without much thought, even when a similar logical decision makes more sense because the idea of being existential is to follow emotions and do what you want. The novels force the heroes to find themselves by asking the questions: Who are we and why are we here?

Hamlet

Written works such as Hamlet are existential and focus on death and revenge. As well as isolating their characters physically and mentally. Going back to Hamlet, the character deals with not having a purpose until he tries to seek revenge, as well as the isolation of being seen as insane. Which are both key themes of existential novels.

Existential novels focus on the struggle to discover meaning, and this purpose- whether it is love, revenge, or something deeper, often sends the characters on a spiral of loneliness as they look for something the world can’t give them.

These types of novels will certainly make some deep thoughts rise in the heads of the readers, just make sure they’re good thoughts.